BLOG JANUARY 2018

in Blog THEMUSICBOXMAN, Uncategorized

To all our readers and visitors to this site Best Wishes for a

Good, Healthy and Happy 2018.

As usual we start the year by looking back on 2017.

The site was unavailable for 3 days in 2017, as a party that

delivered content protection and was discontinued actually

altered the site destination numbers, the day their contract

ran out , making it impossible to find the site. This information

comes from the provider and they changed it back. With our

apologies. The internet is full of really bad people and one

cannot be careful enough. Keep your protection up-to-date

and back up files regularly.

Nevertheless we had a record number of visitors, in the full

year over 21,200, mostly new but also approx. 12% of repeat

visitors. Thank you for visiting the site, your always positive

comments on the site, much appreciated.

By countries most of the visitors by far, almost 70%, come from

the U.S.A. And thereafter mostly from English speaking countries.

UK is second with almost 9%, Canada third with almost 5%,

Australia 4th with almost 4% and Singapore 5th with almost 5%.

The first non English speaking country is The Netherlands in 6th place.

The top 10 is rounded out by The Philippines, India, Malaysia (2 more

English speaking countries) and France in 10th place.

In total we had visitors from 133 countries, including some worn-torn

countries like Syria. And countries as diverse as Uzbekistan, Maldives,

Oman and Kazachstan. Interest in music boxes and musical toys is really

worldwide. All of you are welcome and we appreciate your interest in this ,

as we like to call it, Virtual Museum.

And we do sell some Music Boxes and Musical Toys, check our

Sales section, Music Boxes with a number starting with D and

Musical Toys starting with E, over 300 and 60 for each.

Send us an email and we get back to you within 24 hours.

THEMUSICBOXMAN

BLOG JULY/AUGUST 2017

in Blog THEMUSICBOXMAN, Uncategorized

TO OUR READERS, thank you for checking out the web site and reading this blog.,

The web site is a virtual museum of Music Boxes and Musical Toys from mainly the period 1945 till approx. 1990.The almost 5900 boxes and toys are a good mirror of the variety of boxes and toys produced in this period, but as an estimate and that is my estimate only (there are just no reliable data) represent may be 5% of all different models of music boxes and musical toys produced and marketed in that period and that may even underestimate the numbers. Many model boxes and toys were produced at thousands at a time, but we are counting only the different models, not the absolute numbers (that likely runs in the hundreds of millions). The number of tunes used in those boxes and toys run already into the thousands.

No wonder that many people still have music boxes (musical toys from that period in good condition are by now difficult to find; they were children’s toys primarily, have been played with and in many cases lost their function and were discarded) But many older music boxes come with problems, like stuck winders of the music mechanism (governor and or wheels stuck because of clogged old oil), will wind but not play (likely broken spring) to name some examples or quit working altogether. Some will have sentimental value as they came from family, were received as a child, are a memory to family members that passed away, etc.

We are getting regularly questions about this and try to help with advice. But please first check out the Maintenance Page in the web site as that contains already most of the advice we can give. Advice , as we do NOT do repairs. And in the Links Page of the web site you will find a number of companies/persons selling (new) replacement music mechanisms and the ones that do repair of music boxes/mechanisms. That list, U.S.A. only, is by far not complete. It is therefore always useful to check the internet and see whether you can find a company or person nearer to you. And my advice is always to call first, explain the problem you are trying to solve and if they say they can help, ask for a cost estimate.

In changing an old not working music mechanism for a new one (if that is possible to do without damaging the box itself), please consider that many times it may not be possible to get the same tune. Tunes reflect the times the music boxes were produced, what were popular songs in a time that may be tens of years ago (the eighties is the period that more music boxes were sold than any other time, but even that is already on average 30 years ago). There are of course ‘ classic ‘ tunes like Wedding March, Singing in the Rain, Rock-A-Bye-Baby that remain popular over a long period, but most are not. Therefore the same tune in many cases cannot be found as a replacement; remember, thousands of tunes were used in the period we cover and distributors now have at best a few hundred ones on stock.

If there are still questions I will certainly try to help with advice where I can.

Enjoy the site and thank you again,

THEMUSICBOXMAN

May 2017

in Blog THEMUSICBOXMAN

First a personal note.

This blog has been delayed as themusicboxman had a
knee replacement operation in March, 2017. And that is
a painful affair, with the pain, the doctors say, may
take a year to completely disappear. Throw in a back
thrown out, physical therapy, massage, daily exercises
and it fills the day. But I can walk again, drive
and move around.

But it certainly confronts one with the results of age
and thoughts about the future of the Collection.

The collection really exists of 2 parts, Musical Toys,
approx. 10% of the Collection and Music Boxes, the main
part of the Collection.

It may be that later this year the Musical Toys will be
split off and go elsewhere, no certainty yet. There is
really very little growth in this part of the Collection,
as toys were mainly used by kids and relatively fewer
survived intact, compared to music boxes. In the normal
market of thrift stores, flea markets, estate- and garage
sales little of value is offered anymore. If you look at
the net there are certainly parties still offering
musical toys, but at high prices; the low and medium
market has disappeared. And it was never my intention to
‘ buy ‘ the Collection, the sport was to find items of
interest at affordable prices.

I follow the same idea for music boxes, but find that music
boxes that add to the collection still crop up in many
places at affordable prices. But mainly from the eighties
onward. Earlier music boxes are certainly harder to find
already. And it is also true that the quality of the items
generally is declining. One really has to check an item well
to see whether it is complete, the music working or at least
intact and only slight chips in not important places; and
whether a head, a wing or whatever has not been glued back
on. Some of those glue jobs I have been only able to
see under special light, it happens, they are destroyed.
It is one reason I practically do not buy from the internet
or small private collections or items offered to me. I really
want to check the item myself first.

And please also consider that the end date for items in both
parts of the Collection is around 1990. So even the youngest
items are meanwhile over 25 years old!

The best place for the Music Boxes Collection would be a
museum or a private Collector that wants a ready ‘ museum ‘
in one fell swoop.
If there are interested parties, museum or private investor,
i would appreciate to hear from them to assure the future of
this Music Boxes Collection.

I wish all the readers of the Blog well!

Themusicboxman

FEBRUARY 2017

in About the site, Blog THEMUSICBOXMAN, Uncategorized

The year 2016 saw in total well over 20,000 visitors from 124 countries to our web site.
All are very welcome of course.
The 10 countries with the most visitors were:

U.S.A. (almost 2/3 of all visitors)
UK
Canada
Australia
Russia
Netherlands
Singapore
Brazil
Germany
Philippines

In January and February 2017 so far visitor numbers are
running at an even higher level.

On a different subject: Tunes

Sankyo and Reuge do not want us to publish their information on the relation of cylinder numbers to tunes. That is a pity as from the questions we receive regularly there is quite a bit of interest. Visitors sometimes have a cylinder number but cannot match that to a tune.

On our Tunes page in the web site we give some information, some matching of numbers to tunes, that we have collected ourselves from music boxes where there was both still a label available and where the music mechanism was accessible and the number readable; reading the numbers is especially difficult for Sankyo. But although adding to it from time to time, it is only a small part of all the tunes used in music mechanisms.

Should any of our visitors have that information, it would be greatly appreciated if it was forwarded to us, preferably with a photo for proof. Thanks in advance.

Sometimes visitors are asking to name a tune from the music mechanism itself. As there were in my estimate well over 10,000 tunes used in the period of my Collection, 1945-1990, that is very difficult. However, there are in the internet people, or groups of people, who are just trying to name a tune if it is presented to them. My advice is to make an audio file and contact such people/groups and see whether they can help.

Themusicboxman